Gabrielle Drake

The best in the performing arts from across America and around the world including a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries.

A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters).

Set during the 1960s in the fictional North Yorkshire village of Aidensfield, this enduringly popular series interweaves crime and medical storylines.

Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.

Crossroads is a British television soap opera set in a fictional motel near Birmingham, England. Created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, the commercial ITV network originally broadcast the series between 1964 and 1988. Produced by ATV and later by Central it became a byword for cheap production values, particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s. The series was revived in a glossier version by Carlton Television in 2001, but was again cancelled in 2003. The original theme tune was composed by Tony Hatch, and notably covered by Paul McCartney & Wings on their 1975 album Venus and Mars. A new version, which was first aired in 1987 when the series was relaunched as Crossroads, Kings Oak, was composed by Raf Ravenscroft and Max Early.

Peak Practice is a British drama series about a GP surgery in Cardale — a small fictional town in the Derbyshire Peak District — and the doctors who worked there. It ran on ITV from 10 May 1993 to 30 January 2002 and was one of their most successful series at the time. It originally starred Kevin Whately as Dr Jack Kerruish, Amanda Burton as Dr Beth Glover and Simon Shepherd as Dr Will Preston, though the roster of doctors would change many times over the course of the series. Cardale was based on the Staffordshire village of Longnor for the final series, but was previously based in the Derbyshire village of Crich, although certain scenes were filmed at other nearby Derbyshire towns and villages, most notably Matlock, Belper and Ashover.

The lives of Bodie and Doyle, top agents for Britain's CI5 (Criminal Intelligence 5), and their controller, George Cowley. The mandate of CI5 was to fight terrorism and similar high-profile crimes. Cowley, a hard ex-MI5 operative, hand-picked each of his men. Bodie is a cynical ex-SAS paratrooper and mercenary whose nature ran to controlled violence, while his partner, Doyle, comes to CI5 from the regular police force, and is more of an open minded liberal. Their relationship is often contentious, but they are the top men in their field, and the ones to whom Cowley always assigned to the toughest cases.

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

After a plane carrying three Agents crashes in the Himalayas, they are rescued by an advanced civilisation secretly living in Tibet who grant them enhanced versions of the ordinary five senses, and intellectual and physical abilities.

The New Avengers is a British secret agent fantasy adventure television series broadcast during 1976 and 1977. It is a sequel to the 1960s series The Avengers and was developed by Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. A joint United Kingdom-France-Canada production, the show picks up the adventures of John Steed and his team of Avengers fighting evil plots and world domination. Whereas in the original series Steed had almost always been partnered with a woman, in the new series he had two partners: Mike Gambit, a top agent, crack marksman and trained martial artist, and Purdey, a former trainee with The Royal Ballet who was an amalgam of many of the best talents from Steed's previous female partners.

Thriller is a British television series, originally broadcast in the UK from 1973 to 1976. It is an anthology series: each episode has a self-contained story and its own cast. As the title suggests, each story is a thriller of some variety, from tales of the supernatural to down-to-earth whodunits.

A secret, high-technology international agency called SHADO defends Earth from alien invaders.

DS Barbara Havers is assigned to work with the upper-crust DI Thomas Lynley to solve murders.

The Adventurer is an ITC Entertainment TV adventure series created by Dennis Spooner that ran for one season from 1972 to 1973. It premiered in the UK on 29 September 1972. The show starred Gene Barry as Gene Bradley, a government agent of independent means who poses as a glamorous American movie star.

Never the Twain is a British sitcom that ran for eleven series from 7 September 1981 to 9 October 1991. It was created by Johnnie Mortimer, and was the only sitcom he ever created without his usual writing partner, Brian Cooke. Mortimer wrote the entirety of the first two series and four episodes out of six of the eighth, with the rest being mainly written by Vince Powell and John Kane. It starred Windsor Davies and Donald Sinden as rival antique dealers, and also starred Derek Deadman, Zara Nutley, Robin Kermode, Tacy Kneale, Julia Watson, Honor Blackman, Teddy Turner and Maria Charles. The title is taken from the Rudyard Kipling poem; The Ballad of East and West.

The Brothers is a British television series, produced and shown by the BBC between 1972 and 1976.

A British television anthology series with a fantasy, science fiction and supernatural theme, similar to the American television series The Twilight Zone, and deals with normal people whose everyday situations somehow become extraordinary.

Follows the linked fates of nine bank robbers, led by George. It begins with the nine men meeting in prison during their appeal and traces each individual after the group escape from custody.

Based on P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves stories, The World of Wooster, broadcast on BBC One from 1965 to 1967, followed the farcical adventures of young upper-class twit Bertie Wooster and his invaluable manservant Jeeves. It starred Ian Carmichael as Wooster and Dennis Price as Jeeves. Wodehouse initially felt that Carmichael would be fine as Wooster, but later believed that Carmichael overacted; however, Wodehouse was satisfied enough with to later ask Carmichael to portray Bertie or Jeeves in a musical comedy. Carmichael declined, feeling too old to play Bertie again and that public perception prevented him from playing Jeeves. Wodehouse was far more positive about Price's Jeeves, stating that Price was the best Jeeves he had ever seen. Like many other series of the time, much of the episodes were wiped, leaving all but two now lost. In 2018, it was included at #51 in a list of the top 100 most wanted missing television programmes by TV archivist organisation Kaleidoscope.

Follows the private lives of seven British PMs who lived at Number 10 Downing Street between the 1780s and the 1920s: William Pitt the Younger, the Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley), Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone, David Lloyd-George, Herbert Henry Asquith and James Ramsay MacDonald.

Mike Upchat is an unsuccessful novelist who lives out of a railway station locker - he has the gift of the Gab and changes his life story every episode to impress different women - basically he reinvents himself to score.

Hard-partying wine merchants Jack and Hugo lose all their money and are forced to work for a living.

Follows the staff and patients of a Yorkshire cottage hospital in the 60s, embroiled in tangled love lives and bitter power struggles.

TV personality Robert Danvers, an exceedingly vain rotter, seduces young women daily, never staying long with one. He meets his match in Marion, an American, 19, who's available but refuses any romantic illusions.

Few people know of the chilling reality behind the mysterious phenomenon of unidentified flying objects. Beings from a dying planet have arrived on Earth to kidnap humans and take over their vital organs. Against this threat, SHADO has been created, a secret organisation equipped with the most advanced technology and the best men.

A successful London ad-exec hires a beautiful Hungarian girl to pose for some modeling shots, little realising that she has overheard an assassination plot and is now being hunted by some dangerous killers.

A team of inept undertakers attempt to get a coffin to a funeral on time. An undertaker is in charge of moving a coffin from a home to the church. The home is on the 26th floor of a skyscraper; the stairs are narrow; the lift is small and prone to stop working. Chaos ensues.

A new staging of Christopher Hampton's celebrated adaptation of the classic novel, where among the glittering salons of the super-rich, one misstep can mean ruin. Marquise de Merteuil is a master in the art of survival. Alongside the magnetic Vicomte de Valmont, they turn seduction into strategy and weaponise desire. But when their alliance collapses into rivalry, the battle between them threatens to destroy everyone in their path. Filmed live at the National Theatre, Marianne Elliott directs this thrilling game of love, lies, and social warfare.

When millionaire businessman Guy Taylor takes up with the beautiful Rachel Bell, two years married to a struggling sculptor, he starts to question what he really wants. TV play. Third part of writer Kenneth Jupp's "Chelsea Trilogy"; see also The PHOTOGRAPHER (tx 29/1/1968) and The EXPLORER/ PLAYHOUSE (tx 14/10/1968).

Moonbase Luna represents Earth's first Defence bulwark against the extraterrestrial threat, and is therefore one of the primary targets in attacks by UFOs. At the command of the fascinating Lieutenant Ellis, Base Luna is one of the most sophisticated facilities in SHADO, the secret organisation tasked with defending Earth from alien incursions.

Four sexy young foreign girls come to England as au pairs and quickly become quite intimate with their employers, host families, and just about everyone else they encounter.

A young American computer hackeress is hired by a liberal British lawyer to right the wrong done to a third world country by a London investment company. Even the expertise of her building inspector sidekick can not prevent a surprising development though.

A man can't account for his movements when a woman is discovered strangled.

On Christmas Eve in 1874, the turkey has been stolen from Sir Giles and Lady Hampton. What are they going to serve their guests? They call in the detectives Piggy Malone and Charley Farley to find who stole it.

Bill MacLean is a former CIA agent living in London. He had been fired when he stuck up for one of the men in his command who turned out to be branded a Russian defector. The embittered ex-agent combines forces with another operative to deliver a top Russian secret police official for a price. Before he can deliver the Russian, a trail of corpses and double crosses changes his plans. When his partner who concocted the scheme is murdered, MacLean returns the check to the CIA. They offer him his old job back, but the proud man refuses.

Two female tourists are taken hostage by criminals who are chasing a man recently released from prison who knows the whereabouts of stolen money

Explores the relationships shared by the residents of a seedy boarding house in London. Based on the play The Cellist, by Marion Hart.

A portrait of sculptor Barbara Hepworth revisiting the Yorkshire landscapes that inspired her and her home studio in St Ives, Cornwall.

A surreal, moody short about the fetishisation of automobiles and auto accidents.

An actor and his protege lock themselves away from the world while he rehearses for a part in an upcoming feature.

Seven stories of marital infidelity, told from the women's point of view. A spicy satire of modern manners and mores. Newspaperwoman Sarah relates the separate stories of eight married couples. The husbands are satisfied with their lot, but the wives are not. Sarah describes a situation in which dissatisfied and bored middle-class housewives seek excitement and adventure outside their marital homes and beds.

In Cross Now, during a blazing row with his boss, strangely enough architect Michael Ponsford still gets his promotion. However, he does not get much time to enjoy it, because, in the middle of the argument, his boss suffers a heart attack. And he is not the only one to die. Ponsford is haunted by death: the woman with whom he had been flirting for too long, his wife's father, one of his competitors, they all succumb. Finally, Ponsford's young son also dies.

Profile of musician Nick Drake, who was only 26 when he died in 1974 but whose three albums have been deeply and increasingly influential on the rock and pop world.

Omnibus feature about British people having issues having sex, with a wraparound segment featuring the always-fetching Gabrielle Drake.

A painter is entertained by a group of 3 troubadours.